


let us set aside turmoil and breathe safely together

by memorysdaughter



Series: got your heart in a headlock [3]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Blind Character, Blindness, F/F, Major Character Injury, One Real Good "Frozen 2" Reference, Refugees, Swimming, but just the one, physical assault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:07:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21801886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/memorysdaughter/pseuds/memorysdaughter
Summary: "I'll see you when you wake up.  You won't see me, but that's nothing new."A series of horrific events threaten to disrupt Beau and Yasha's happiness.
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett & Yasha, Beauregard Lionett/Yasha
Series: got your heart in a headlock [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1472777
Comments: 13
Kudos: 172





	let us set aside turmoil and breathe safely together

**Author's Note:**

> This is the third in a series! I love this AU and I'm always happy to keep returning to it.
> 
> I make one reference, non-spoilering (sort of?), to "Frozen II" in the last vignette.
> 
> Thank you to everyone who has supported this series!
> 
> Title is from "Microcosm" by Beth Patterson.

_hazy_

“I’ll be right here when you wake up, Beau,” Yasha says. “Dairon and I will be right in the waiting room.”

“Ohhhhhhkay,” Beau drawls, her eyes lidded. “You’re _so_ pretty.”

Yasha laughs. “Don’t get any ideas.”

She leans down and kisses Beau. “And don’t flirt with any surgeons, okay?”

“Ohhhhkay,” Beau mumbles.

“Ma’am, we’re ready for her.” A man’s voice comes from Yasha’s left.

“Let’s get out of the way, Yasha,” Dairon suggests. “Would you like to take my elbow?”

“Okay,” Yasha says. She’s not quite sure what to make of Dairon. She knows Beau likes Dairon, which should be enough, but Dairon is very reserved. People who don’t talk very much or who aren’t expressive are very difficult for Yasha to figure out. She wishes she could do better.

She takes the proffered elbow for the short walk to the waiting rooms attached to the operating suites, and sits down in the chair Dairon indicates, putting her cane on the floor and settling her bag on her lap.

“Beauregard will be fine,” Dairon says, only a little stiffly.

“Oh,” Yasha says, because she hasn’t thought any other way.

“She broke that same hand about six years ago, just like this time,” Dairon goes on, “doing something stupid in the dojo. Came through surgery with flying colors.”

“I know she really likes working for you,” Yasha says, only a bit lamely. It’s true, but she isn’t quite sure what to say to Dairon.

“I like her a great deal.”

Yasha fidgets with her bag. She wants to take out the book she’s been reading, but she’s not sure if that would be rude.

“Yasha, I need to make some calls to check on the dojo,” Dairon says, as though telepathically understanding that Yasha has no more to say. “Is it all right if I step away for a few minutes?”

“Yes,” Yasha says. “I’ll just… wait here.”

“I’ll be right back,” Dairon says.

She leaves and Yasha, relieved, takes her book out of her bag. She flips it open to the elastic bookmark and lets her fingers begin to trail over the raised bumps of the story.

“Hey,” Beau whispers to the person next to her. She’s pretty sure she knows this person, but things are a little fuzzy. “Hey.”

“Hello, Beauregard.”

“Hey. Can I have some apple juice?”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Beau closes her eyes. She’s somewhere with bright lights and lots of beeping. She kind of remembers what’s happening. Surgery. Or something? Right?

When she opens her eyes again the stern-faced woman hasn’t returned, and there’s definitely no apple juice. She turns her head and sees an absolutely _gorgeous_ woman standing against the wall, wearing a purply-blue backpack and holding a white cane. “Oh,” Beau breathes. _“Pretty.”_

The object of her attention is tall, with dark black hair fading into white at the tips, dressed casually in jean shorts and a purple T-shirt. She is the loveliest person Beau has ever seen, and immediately Beau wants to get up and introduce herself.

Then she realizes she’s not wearing any pants.

The stern woman comes back with a Styrofoam cup. “I found you some apple juice, Beauregard. The nurse asked me to have you sip slowly.”

“Dairon,” Beau says, the name coming back to her suddenly, “Dairon - who is that pretty lady over there?”

Dairon turns. “That’s Yasha.”

“She’s so _beautiful,”_ Beau whispers. “Do you know her? Can you introduce me to her?”

“The painkillers are good, huh?” Dairon asks, a smile spreading across her face. “I can introduce you to her, if you want.”

“Is she single?”

“No, unfortunately,” Dairon says. “She has a girlfriend.”

“Oh, _no,”_ Beau moans.

Dairon laughs out loud and hands Beau the apple juice. “Beauregard, she’s _your_ girlfriend.”

Beau spits out the apple juice. _“What?”_

Tears fill her eyes. “But she’s so… _beautiful.”_

“Yeah, you’ve got me there. No idea what she sees in you,” Dairon says.

“That’s so amazing,” Beau sobs. “She’s so wonderful.”

“Drink your juice, and I’ll have her come over and talk to you.”

“Okay,” Beau gets out, bringing the cup of juice to her mouth. She slobbers most of it down the front of her hospital gown, her eyes keenly following Dairon’s progress across the room to the beautiful woman she’s been told is her girlfriend.

Dairon leads the gorgeous woman back, saying, “She’s a little loopy, Yasha, but she’s awake.”

“Beau?” the glorious Amazon asks.

“Yeah,” Beau gets out.

“Are you in a lot of pain?”

“None,” Beau says, for in that moment she is feeling absolutely no pain, only the sweet taste of apple juice in her mouth and an upswelling of love in her heart because this woman loves her, somehow.

“That’s good,” Yasha says. “We’ll take you home in a little bit and you can rest, okay?”

“Will you be there?”

Yasha looks surprised. “Of course I will.”

“Will you… stay with me?”

“Of course I will, Beau.”

Beau _really_ likes when Yasha says her name.

“Hey, Yasha,” she says, dopily grinning up at her girlfriend, “you’re blind, right? Is it… is it ‘cause you saw how hot I am?”

Yasha laughs, and it’s the only sound Beau wants to hear.

* * *

_underwater_

Yasha sits in the front of the bus, the better to hear the stop announcements. She also likes the bus driver, Joel, who always makes a point of letting her know when the stop for the sporting club is coming up. He says she reminds her of someone he knows, but he never tells her any more than that.

She also prefers to sit in the front of the bus because she doesn’t like to hear the other people on the bus talk. Everyone in Nicodranas has an opinion about the refugees in their city, it seems. Yasha’s heard most of them. Some are positive, like women talking about how their children are welcoming refugee children to the schools, or some younger-sounding people discussing their experiences volunteering at shelters.

But most aren’t so nice. Men talking about how the refugees _are bringing disease_ into Nicodranas, how the refugees _will steal anything not nailed down,_ how they’re _taking jobs from our people,_ and _taking all the resources we need._ Sometimes women join in, catty and sly and bitchy. Yasha hears all of it.

She obviously can’t tell if they’re looking at her when they say things like that, but sometimes she hears Joel let out a little grunt when the comments get particularly pointed and awful and she’s figured out that’s when they’re looking at her. Yasha doesn’t look like most of the refugees from Xhorhas, because they’re mostly from the settlements near the border and she’s from a bit further away, but she’s odd-looking enough and somehow that translates her into someone who’s an “other,” and that gets translated into “refugee.” Jester and Fjord always tell Yasha how pretty she is, and Beau certainly spares no words - or touches - to remind her of the same, but Yasha knows she’s… different. Her eyes are two different colors, with torture scars from Dr. Obann and flash-bomb damage all over her body. And there’s the not-so-small matters of her being blind and nearly six feet tall. In any place, including her homeland, Yasha is not the norm, but here it seems people aren’t willing to tolerate that.

“Yasha.” Joel’s voice breaks through her thoughts and the voices of people talking in the back of the bus. “Sports club’s the next one.”

“Thank you,” Yasha murmurs. She picks up her backpack from the seat next to her and stands, using her cane to make her way to the front of the bus.

“You got someone meetin’ you?” Joel asks gruffly.

“Yes,” Yasha tells him. “Keg, from the Center.”

“Good,” Joel says. “See you on Thursday.”

The bus slows, the bell dings, and the automated voice says: _Opal Archways. Transfer point for gray, blue, and yellow lines. Lighthouse Sports Club._

Yasha steps off the bus into the cool air. She hears the bus pull away from behind her and orients herself towards the sports club’s driveway. It’s a short walk up to the front of the sports club, and she smells Keg before she gets even close to the stone bench where Keg usually waits for her.

“Hi, Keg,” Yasha says. “New hair pomade?”

“I got it to try for free from my razor company,” Keg says. “I don’t think I’ll order it. Too much… ginger.”

“It is a bit spicy.”

“Speaking of spice… in no way whatsoever… you ready for some more swimming?”

“Yes,” Yasha says.

Since she’s technically “graduated” from the Storm Lord Center, only attending a few sessions once or twice a week, Yasha’s started looking elsewhere for things to do. Upon hearing that swimming was something Yasha enjoyed, Keg helped her get a membership to the sports club, and for the last few weeks they’ve swam laps together three times a week.

“How’s Beau doing?” Keg asks as they head inside.

“She’s still grumpy,” Yasha answers. Beau’s surgery left her effectively one-handed, which to Beau was nothing short of torture. Yasha, who’d been through _actual_ torture, gently refrained from mentioning that. Anyway, she liked taking care of Beau. It made her feel good.

“And that’s different from her usual _how?”_

Yasha hears kidding in Keg’s voice, and she smiles. “She can medicate this grumpiness away.”

Keg laughs.

Yasha takes Keg’s elbow as they enter the sports club, her cane tip-tapping on the tile floor towards the locker rooms. “Keg,” she says softly, thinking of her bus ride, “do people ever look at you like you’re… different?”

“I am different,” Keg says. “For one, I’m much better looking than everyone around here.”

It almost makes Yasha smile, but she’s still caught up in worrying and wondering. “No, because you’re…”

“Because I’m missing both legs?” Keg turns left and there’s a pause as she opens the door, then Yasha feels the air get warmer as they move into the locker room proper. “Yeah, sometimes folks get a little het up. But I think it’s different for me - once they hear I’m a veteran it changes their opinion on me. Then they fall all over themselves thanking me for my service and all that. Why? Somebody been staring at you?”

“How would I know that?” Yasha asks. 

Keg laughs. “Well, there must have been some reason you asked.”

Yasha finds the edge of the bench with her cane and sits down, setting her backpack next to her. She unzips the bag as she pries off her shoes. “I hear people talking about… people like me,” she says hesitantly.

Keg makes a “go on” sort of noise.

“They don’t like refugees. Sometimes when Fjord’s watching the news I hear there’s been attacks happening, people hurting refugees, disrupting things going on at the places they’re living… I hear them talking and whispering about me on the bus sometimes.”

“Has anyone ever threatened you?” Keg asks.

Yasha shakes her head. “I don’t think so. I was… grabbed a few days ago, but whoever it was let go of me once they figured out I was blind. It was so weird… I heard him yell _Shit, she’s blind_ and my head got fuzzy and I had to sit down on the sidewalk.”

“Shit,” Keg says. “Did you tell anyone?”

“No,” Yasha says. “I was embarrassed.”

She’s still embarrassed now, thinking of how powerless she felt. In Xhorhas, before the whole world exploded, she was athletic, strong - she was nearly as fit as Beau. She sparred with the other girls at what passed for their semblance of an athletic club, and with Zuala in the woods when they were together. It was just something to _do,_ to feel their arms and legs moving through the air with power and strength. (And plus, when she tussled with Zuala, it almost always ended in kissing, which was an even better benefit.)

“It’s not embarrassing to ask for help, or to let someone know you’re feeling uncomfortable,” Keg says. “Tell you what - let’s swim our laps and I’ll think about the next steps we can take to keep you safe.”

Yasha changes into her suit, her mind still whirling. She only comes back to the chatter and warmth of the locker room when Keg says, “You ready?”

“Yes,” Yasha answers.

Keg scoots closer to Yasha and wraps her arms around Yasha’s neck. Yasha brings up her left arm and scoops Keg’s body up from the bench. She gets her cane from its place against the locker, shifts Keg into a better position against her body, and walks out of the locker room and towards the pool.

It’s not a perfect method, but Yasha likes carrying Keg out to the pool. She likes to feel useful. And Keg didn’t like leaving her prosthetic legs at the side of the pool - not that someone would steal them, as she told Yasha on one of their first days at the athletic club, but because she didn’t like the feeling of being able to look up and see half of her body at the edge.

“Made me all wobbly on the insides” was how she phrased it. That was when Yasha offered to carry her out to the pool, and it’s what they’ve done ever since.

“Okay, okay, good, few more steps to the left,” Keg coaches as Yasha canes her way across the tile floor. “Great, good, and… stop.”

Yasha smiles. She knows where she is in relation to the pool, but she always lets Keg “backseat drive” on their journeys together. She sets Keg down at the edge of the pool and puts her cane against the long end. Once she hears the _splash_ of Keg entering the water, Yasha sits down and slides into the pool.

She feels her heart rate slow as the water engulfs her body. Though she doesn’t need to, she closes her eyes before she goes under. Yasha pushes off from the pool wall and slips into the lap lane with the grace of an otter. Maybe an otter. She’s not quite sure. Are otters graceful?

Whatever it is she’s embodying, she simply _goes,_ and her mind goes blank as her arms and legs propel her down the lane. There’s something womb-like about the pool - it always fixes whatever’s wrong. She can only hope it will work this time.

* * *

_missed_

Someone’s shaking her. “Beau, wake up!”

“Huhhh…”

“Beau! Wake _up!”_

There’s another, harder, shake and Beau opens her eyes groggily, looking up into Jester’s face. “What?” she grits out irritably.

“Your phone’s been ringing for the last hour and I can’t take it anymore! Who’s calling you that much?”

Beau sits up and lets the world tilt around her. She’s needed fewer painkillers each day, but even the smaller doses are still making her sleepy. She can’t believe her phone’s been ringing for an _hour,_ though. Jester has a tendency to exaggerate.

She picks up her phone and looks at it. There are a few text messages from Yasha, a phone call from Yasha but no message, a voicemail from a number she doesn’t recognize, a voice mail from Yasha, and a second voicemail from a number she doesn’t know, followed by about six missed calls from a different number.

Beau taps the first voicemail message: _“Hey, Beau, it’s Keg. Yasha said she couldn’t get an answer from you, so she was going to walk home from the club. I had to run out to a meeting so I couldn’t give her a ride. Will you let me know when she gets home? Thanks.”_

Through the fog of the painkillers Beau starts to feel fear. The message was left three hours ago. She taps Yasha’s voicemail message.

 _“Beau. Somebody’s - following - me.”_ Yasha’s voice is low and it sounds like she’s having trouble breathing.

The voicemail cuts off abruptly and Beau freezes.

“What is it?” Jester asks.

“Something’s wrong with Yasha,” Beau says. Her fingers are shaking but she manages to start the third voicemail.

_“Hello Ms. Lionett, my name is Joel. I’m a city bus driver and I’m acquainted with your… your girlfriend. I found her unconscious a few blocks from the athletic club and transported her to the hospital. I found your number on an in-case-of-emergency card among her belongings. Please come as soon as you get this message.”_

Beau drops her phone. The shakes have moved up her arms and she’s nauseous. Jester grabs Beau’s chin. “What? What do we need to do?”

“It’s… it’s Yasha,” Beau says. “We have to get to her.”

She tries to stand up and she can’t. She’s sobbing and she didn’t realize it. “Yasha,” she cries to Jester. “Yasha, she’s hurt.”

“Okay, okay,” Jester says. “Let’s go. Put some clothes on. I’ll get the car ready.”

Beau doesn’t know how she gets into a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt, doesn’t know how her flip-flops get on her feet… doesn’t remember coming down the stairs. But she’s in the kitchen and Jester’s there and then she’s in the car.

 _Are we too late?_ Beau thinks numbly, as Jester buckles her seatbelt for her. _If I hadn’t taken the painkillers and fallen asleep would I have been able to pick up the phone?_

“We’ll get there,” Jester says, and Beau’s suddenly aware that the car is moving. “We’ll be there for her, Beau.”

The lights of the city stream past the car windows, gleaming like flashing stars held captive for mere seconds before slipping down the glass in fat drops of rain. Jester drives as she always does - calm and unflappable, singing along in a low voice to whatever’s on the radio - but Beau’s entire body vibrates with the car’s engine, threatening to rip her veins and nerves right out of her arms and legs, unspool herself like she’s some sort of wildly unpicked embroidery sampler.

Beau has no idea how long the car ride takes, though somewhere deep inside she knows that the drive from their house to the hospital, on a normal day, takes about ten minutes. It could be a day or seven seconds - she is both inside and outside of time, it seems, her heart thrumming in her ears as though each beat was a door to slip in and out of each moment.

At last the car stops moving and Jester parks and the lights of the parking garage overhead are far too bright and Beau feels dizzy when she gets out of the car. Jester’s there at her side, holding her up, and Beau takes her first few wobbling steps across the concrete floor.

“What if we’re… what if we’re…” Beau can’t even get the words out. “What if we’re…”

“We’re not,” Jester says firmly, somehow knowing the right thing to say despite Beau’s inability to even finish the sentence.

“I knew… I knew she wasn’t… I should have…”

“We do what we can,” Jester says. “There’s nothing we could have done.”

“The news,” Beau says, and that one throws Jester for a loop.

“What about the news?”

“On the news… all that violence against refugees… I should have been with her.”

“You had hand surgery three days ago,” Jester says gently. “You can’t be with her every moment of every day, Beau.”

“I _should_ have been,” Beau says, her voice pure anguish. “I _should_ have been, Jes. I told her I’d keep her safe, I told her I’d stay with her…”

She’s crying and she hates it. Jester turns Beau towards her and wraps her arms around Beau and for a long series of moments they stand together in the parking garage, Beau sobbing, Jester rocking them, stroking Beau’s back, murmuring things Beau’s too upset to hear.

At some point Beau finds she can breathe again and her vision clears. She squeezes Jester’s hand with her good one, and straightens up a bit. “Okay,” she grits out. “Okay, let’s go get her.”

Jester nods, and gives Beau a kiss on the forehead. “Let’s get her.”

The parking garage elevator deposits them outside the double doors leading into the hospital, and a short walk through those double doors puts them in the main corridor of the hospital, with a shorter hallway leading off to the emergency room on the left. The hallway is bordered by a low wall, behind which plants and small fountains add natural charm, and sitting on that wall are two people who look as different as night, and, well, some other night: Keg, in a button-down white shirt and black pants, some sort of emblem pinned to her bright blue tie; and a man in a brown-and-gray plaid button-down and jeans, holding a coat on his lap.

Keg pushes herself off the wall when she sees Jester and Beau, and the man, obviously understanding that these two individuals are important, follows her lead.

“What happened?” Beau whispers to Keg.

“I don’t know,” Keg says.

“How did you get here?”

“Drove myself,” Keg says.

“No, I mean, how did you _know_ to be here?”

“This guy called me,” Keg says, jerking a thumb at the much-taller man. “This is Joel. He drives the bus Yasha rides. I gave him my number back when we first started going to the athletic club together. It was mostly so he could let me know if the bus was going to be late or if Yasha didn’t show up or something, but… but it turned out to work out just fine for this situation as well.”

“I’m Joel,” the man says, as though agreeing with Keg’s earlier statement. “Joel Miller. I was the one who found… which one of you is Beau?”

Beau raises her non-casted hand. “I am.”

He nods. “You look like how she describes you.”

“What happened?” Beau asks.

“I was driving one of the last routes for the night, and I saw this group of people standing around the corner market a few blocks from the pier. Not a great part of town, but not the worst by a long shot. There’s not usually a lot of people there, that time of night, so I stopped the bus and got off. All of the people ran away when they saw me.”

He rubs his hand over his face. “She was laying on the ground behind the store. She was beat to hell.”

Beau’s knees go weak. Keg grabs Beau around the waist and props her up.

“Her cane was snapped. There was blood in her hair and coming out of her mouth. And I found her bag.” He holds out Yasha’s purple backpack. One of the straps is ripped and it seems to have been crushed by heavy, booted feet.

“Thank you,” Beau says, taking it from Joel with numb hands. Her voice is hollow and it seems to come from somewhere outside her.

“The people you saw, were they the ones who were beating her?” Jester asks.

Joel shakes his head. “I don’t think so. I think they were just… looking. Like she was some sort of garbage on the street.”

Rage pounds in Beau’s veins. She tries to keep her voice level as she says, “If I go in there, will they let me see her?”

“I think so,” Joel answers. “I don’t know, though. But you can’t lose anything by trying.”

“Good,” Beau says. She squeezes Jester’s hand and takes a few wobbling steps away from Keg.

She finds her spine returning as she makes her way down the short hallway to the emergency room door. There’s a metal detector behind it, and a guard who looks like he’s either forty or eighty, nowhere in between. He waves her through it, Beau trying to explain about the pins in her wrist even as the detector goes off, lights and alarm blaring.

Somehow she stumbles through that explanation and finds herself facing a receptionist at a large desk. “Yasha… Nydoorin,” Beau gets out. “I need to… I mean, I’m here to see… Yasha Nydoorin.”

The receptionist looks down at the tablet in front of her. “Wait over there. I’ll let someone know you’re here for her.”

Beau moves, barely, to the spot the receptionist pointed out. At this time of night the ER is full of the injured and ill of Nicodranas and the colors and sounds of the suffering blare into Beau’s consciousness. She’s thinking of Yasha, of Yasha’s eyes, of the feeling of Yasha’s thumb across her wrist, of Yasha sleeping on her stomach with the flare of wings spread out across her shoulder blades, and a wave of grief so potent and knife-edged that she can barely stand flows through her. Her stomach twists and she wants to curl up into a ball.

“Nydoorin?” a voice calls.

Beau forces her head up. “Me,” she says, softly, and then repeats it, louder: “Me! I’m here for her.”

The nurse is kind-eyed, almost impossibly so, and she gently holds Beau’s hand. “I can’t let you see her right now. We’re taking her up to surgery.”

“What?” Beau can’t stop the feeling that she’s untethered, that she’s living an experience outside her body. “What happened?”

“She was beaten very badly,” the nurse says, her voice still calm. “She has some head trauma and some internal bleeding. She has many fractured bones and her eye sockets are broken, which might affect her sight.”

That one statement strikes Beau with the force of a honking clown nose, and she starts to laugh hysterically, losing grip on the world, as though she’s never heard anything funnier, and never will again.

When the sobbing starts she can’t quite say.

* * *

_on the drift_

In the darkness beyond the light she hears them.

_Oh, look at this one! Look at her!_

_Tall fucker, isn’t she?_

_What’s that, a cane? What is she, blind?_

_Hey! Freak!_

_Bet she came here for medical care - bet they’re paying for it but we’re stuck paying out the ass for what we need._

_Refugee scum._

_Hey!_

She remembers walking faster, ignoring them the way Keg told her to, concentrating on her steps on the concrete, her breathing, the words in her marriage vows to Zuala, the feeling of Beau’s Braille tattoo under her fingertips.

_Step. Breathe. Vow. Tattoo._

_Step. Breathe. Vow. Tattoo._

Out of nowhere something slams into her chest. It’s fist-like, fist-shaped, probably a fist. Definitely a fist. Yasha bows in over it, hears her breath wheeze out of her lungs.

_I’m talking to you!_

She can’t breathe. She stumbles forward with her cane out, trying to seek a path in front of her. There’s a body, a big body, breathing heavily, close by. All she wants is to move away, to run, to hide.

There’s another punch, this one to her gut. She doubles over, falling to her knees.

Someone yanks her cane from her hand.

Someone grabs her backpack from her. She feels the straps bite into her skin as they tear it away.

She yells out in Xhorhassian, which she knows is wrong and will only inflame them more, but no other words will come out of her mouth. _Please leave me alone! I just want to get home!_

_Can’t even speak our language!_

Yasha tries to get back to her feet, but someone kicks her in the side, then her back. One person grabs her hands and pulls them behind her back, another punches her in the face - once, twice -

She’s sobbing. _I’m so sorry, please let me go! I’m so sorry!_ _Beau, please - please let me go to her!_

They’re taunting her. Hitting her. She can’t feel anything anymore; there’s just pain and tears and the thought that she would rather die literally _anywhere_ else than here, being taunted by angry men who hate her. She wants Beau, wants to feel Beau’s arms around her…

And she realizes for the first time that she desperately wants to see.

She wants to know who these fuckers are, so she’ll know their faces when she kills them.

A doctor comes and talks to them, quietly and gently. He tells them Yasha will need surgery due to internal bleeding, that her injuries are very serious, and that there is a possibility she might have lasting effects from being hit in the head. He asks about Yasha’s previous medical history, why she has burns over various parts of her body and scars on her face and chest. He holds Beau’s hand and asks if there’s any help he can give.

Beau just shakes her head. “No. Please just… please help her.”

“We’re going to do our very best,” the doctor says gently. “I’ll have someone escort you to the surgical waiting area.”

They make a little knot in the surgical waiting room, Jester and Beau and Fjord, and Keg, and Dr. Trickfoot, who for the first time since they’ve known her asks them to call her _Pike._

“We’ve been through quite a bit together. No need for formality now,” she tells them, and offers them snacks or drinks from a cooler she brought.

The others take things, but Beau’s stomach is twisted with nausea and the thought of eating makes her woozy. She holds Jester’s hand and leans against Fjord’s shoulder and tries very hard not to cry.

* * *

_frequency_

When they bring Yasha up from surgery, Beau’s the only one allowed to go in to see her.

“Only for a few minutes,” the nurse tells her. “Then we’ll take her to the ICU, and you can spend more time with her once she’s settled.”

Beau wants to argue, but she knows it won’t get her anywhere, so she nods. She follows the nurse back into recovery, passing by cubicles filled with other patients and beeping, hissing machinery. It’s sensory overload, the sights and smells and sounds of the hospital, and all Beau wants is to wake up at home, in her own bed, with Yasha beside her.

“She’s still on the ventilator,” the nurse says as they approach one of the last cubicles on the left, closest to the nurses’ station, “but she can probably hear you, so feel free to talk to her. Please be gentle if you touch her, so as not to dislodge any of her lines, okay?”

She looks back and sees Beau’s stricken face. “Take it one minute at a time. Things are going to get better, even if they get better slowly.”

Beau shakes her head. No one can make that promise.

The nurse squeezes Beau’s good hand and pulls back the curtain to the cubicle.

Besides her blackened eyes and the tube in her mouth, Yasha looks just like she’s sleeping. Beau tiptoes in and stands next to the bed, taking in all of the tubes and wires attached to Yasha, trying to figure out what everything is. She has no idea what all of the machinery for, but there’s so much of it that the situation seems impossibly dire.

“Hi, Yash,” she murmurs, getting down close to Yasha’s ear. “It’s me. I’m right here. I’m going to be here when you wake up, okay? I love you. I love you so much.”

She squeezes Yasha’s hand, gently, and kisses Yasha on the forehead. Beau keeps her head bowed, just trying to take in every sensation of being with Yasha.

She feels something on her wrist.

Beau looks down. Yasha’s thumb is slowly touching the Braille tattoo. As Beau watches, Yasha continues to touch Beau’s wrist, moving back and forth in a hesitant, somewhat-jerky sweep.

“Oh, Yasha,” Beau breathes. “I love you. Keep fighting. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there to protect you.”

She keeps her forehead against Yasha’s, leaning into that touch, feeling the somehow-comforting pressure of thumb against wrist, wishing things could always be that simple, knowing things are irreversibly changed and broken.

Yasha hears the world again after some period of time. There’s some beeping. Some whirring. Below that, almost as an afterthought, there’s music. Music from home. It’s been so long since she heard her native language.

There’s pressure, too, and pain. On her eyes. On her belly. On her mouth, her face. This would be very alarming if Yasha didn’t feel halfway away from her body. And if she didn’t feel someone’s hand in hers.

Carefully she moves her thumb, looking for security.

_Y. O. U. R. S._

She breathes out with satisfaction. There’s some pressure in her airway, but she’s so glad to be safe that nothing else matters.

“Yasha?” The voice is soft and hesitant. “Can you hear me? Squeeze my hand if you can hear me.”

She squeezes.

“Okay, okay, okay,” the voice says, and it’s Beau’s and she sounds sad and happy at the same time and that’s so confusing. “You have a tube down your throat, so don’t try to talk. If you remember what happened before… before right now, squeeze my hand.”

A lot of it’s a blur but there were fists, there was anger and yelling and fear, _so much_ fear… Yasha squeezes.

“Okay,” Beau says, her voice gentler. “I’m so sorry.”

There’s movement, transmitted through the hand in hers, and then a kiss brushes across Yasha’s forehead. She tries to lean into it.

“You’ve been here four days,” Beau goes on, still close to Yasha’s head. “You had some surgery on the first day you were here, and then you were up here in the ICU for about a day and a half, and then you… you kinda crashed and you had to have some more surgery. We’ve been here the whole time. Me, and Jester, and Fjord except for when he had to go to work, and Keg’s been here, and Dr. Trickfoot, and a bunch of your friends from Storm Lord… we’ve all been here. We all just…”

Beau’s voice cracks and Yasha squeezes the hand still in hers.

“... just love you so much,” Beau gets out, and then she’s crying and Yasha can hear it. All she can do is squeeze Beau’s hand and move her thumb over Beau’s wrist.

After a few long minutes Beau snorts and snuffles and seems to regain herself. “But you’re going to be okay. You’ve been doing so much better… they might take the tube out this afternoon, and then you can talk to me and tell me if you like this music or not. It’s kinda growing on me.”

Yasha listens to the music, letting the words wend up around her ears. It’s a bubble-gum Xhorhassian girl-pop band, one she remembers the girls in her tribe liking. _Hey boy / meet you outside after dark / Hey boy / you wanna meet me in the park? / I’ll show you the world / you can see it in my eyes / make a choice now if you wanna be my guy -_ it’s nothing special, Yasha’s heard music like it hundreds of times since she came to Nicodranas, but hearing it in her own language feels like a weird caress.

“It’s awful, isn’t it?” Beau asks, leaning her head against Yasha’s shoulder. “It’s, like, terrible girly shit, isn’t it? I mean, I don’t understand it, but it’s got that… _feel._ Keg found it for me. I have another playlist, too - I like that one better. It’s more moody. More… folk guitars.”

Yasha’s getting sleepy now, the pop music and the weight of Beau’s head and what she’s thinking are probably some very nice medications flowing through her bloodstream like a cocktail. She moves her thumb again, a little slower.

“I’ll see you when you wake up,” Beau says, and Yasha hears that smile in her voice, the smile she loves. “You won’t see me, but that’s nothing new.”

Yasha feels a kiss on her forehead and she drifts, drifts, _drifts…_

* * *

_listen_

It’s snowing on the day Yasha gets to go home. Lightly, not with any fervor, but just enough that snowflakes kiss eyelids and cheeks before gently floating to the pavement and disappearing.

The two weeks Yasha’s been in the hospital were the longest two weeks of Beau’s life. She feels like she hasn’t slept or eaten since the night she showed up at the emergency room, despite knowing that’s extremely untrue. Everything feels… sharper, somehow. More aggressive. Dangerous? (No, that can’t be true - Beauregard Lionett has never felt afraid of anything in her entire life, because she’s stronger than anything that’s coming at her… at least, it _was_ true. Now everyone, including their seventy-year-old mail carrier, seems like a potential attacker, and Beau hates the way that makes her feel.)

Yasha’s story was picked up by the local news and several of the businesses near the pier got involved, sharing their security camera footage in an attempt to find the attackers. Apparently there were a few witnesses to the attack, and two of the people Joel saw standing over Yasha’s body came forward as well. The police put together audio samplings from several suspects, and Yasha listened to them, her hand clenched in Beau’s.

“This one,” she told the investigator. “He called me _refugee scum.”_

And, “Him as well. He said I was a _tall fucker.”_

It made Beau want to rip the men apart with her bare hands. She couldn’t understand how Yasha could remain so calm while listening to the voices of people who literally broke her body.

Now she studies Yasha as they wait for Fjord to come and pick them up. “You doing okay?”

Yasha licks her lips and tenses her hand around Beau’s. “Yes.”

“Okay. It’s snowing - did I tell you that? Was there snow in Xhorhas where you were?”

Yasha’s face clouds over immediately. “Don’t talk about Xhorhas,” she hisses. “Don’t let _anyone_ hear you talk about it.”

Beau watches Yasha draw into herself, her face stormy, body hunched, other hand clenching as though she’ll have to fight someone off. She looks like the new refugee Beau saw nearly three years ago in the front hallway of their home, unsure of everything and terrified, drifting tetherless in a world that didn’t make sense. “Okay, okay, I won’t say anything.”

She leans Yasha towards her and kisses her forehead worriedly.

Yasha curls in further, pulling away from Beau.

Beau watches the snowflakes twirl to the ground with an ache pounding in her heart.

Keg comes by the house on Thursday, a usual swimming day. She finds Beau and Jester sitting in the kitchen with mugs in front of them and saddened looks on their faces. “Who peed in the cocoa?”

“No one,” Jester says. “It’s just…”

Her face falls and she looks down into her mug.

“It’s Yasha,” Beau says.

“Ah,” Keg says.

“She hasn’t wanted to come out of her room since she got home from the hospital,” Beau goes on. “She’s not eating. She’s not showering. She won’t let any of us touch her. She’s… every night she wakes up screaming.”

“She hit Beau,” Jester adds softly, looking up at Keg.

“What?” Keg demands.

“I was trying… I was trying to help her,” Beau says, her voice catching in her throat. “I was going to help her take a shower, and I had these covers to put over her cast, and when I tried to help her put them on I touched her and she just lost it. She punched me in the chest and probably would have gotten a few more hits in if Fjord hadn’t pulled her off me.”

“Then she screamed at Fjord,” Jester says. “So we just left her in her room. There was a lot of screaming and banging and stuff.”

Keg looks between the two serious women. “Would it be all right if I went and talked to her?”

“You can try,” Beau says softly.

Keg shrugs. “Can’t hurt. Come with me, though - maybe it’ll help her to know we’re all here to support her.”

Jester and Beau exchange looks but then get up from the table, following behind Keg.

Keg knocks on Yasha’s door. “Yasha?”

There’s no answer.

“Let me know you’re alive in there, woman,” Keg says.

There’s a hesitant pause, and then the door opens a crack.

Beau tries to hold herself steady on the landing - this is the first positive response Yasha’s given anyone in almost a week.

  
 _“Jzet?”_ Yasha’s voice is dead, hollow, whispery. She’s so tired. She props herself up against the crack in the door.

 _“Yasha, you’re safe,”_ a gentle Xhorhassian voice tells her. _“You need to eat. You need to let your family take care of you.”_

_“I miss you so much.”_

_“All you have to do is open the door. We’re all right here.”_

_“I’m so sorry.”_

_“You don’t have to apologize. You weren’t at fault for what happened. All we want to do is help you feel better. Please let us take care of you.”_

Yasha feels tears on her face. _“I’m worthless,”_ she sobs. _“I’m broken and small and blind and awful. Let me go, let me go. I don’t deserve to be here anymore.”_

The voice gets sharp. _“That is absolute horseshit. You are strong and kind and hardworking and you deserve to be better than sick and sad and hungry. Let us help you.”_

_“I’m so sorry.”_

_“It’s not time for apologies. It’s time for work. Are you ready to work?”_

Yasha pauses. That’s not Zuala’s voice. Zuala never asked her that. Only one person ever asked Yasha that question: Keg. It was how they’d start a lot of their orientation and mobility sessions. _It’s time for work. Are you ready to work?_

And Yasha always said _yes,_ because she knew there was a whole world out there that wasn’t stopping and wasn’t waiting for her to be “un-blind”; she needed to live in it and there was no time to waste. And maybe that’s what’s happening now - the world’s not stopping and if she doesn’t get back into it she’ll fall out of it entirely. And there are hands reaching out trying to grab her, trying to pull her back in - they might not be Zuala’s, but they’re still hers and they’re still good and she’s so tired of being alone and scared.

She brings her head up to the crack in the door. _“I’m ready.”_

 _“Good,”_ Keg says in Xhorhassian. _“I’m glad to hear that.”_

“She’s ready for some help.” Keg turns back to look at Beau and Jester; their mouths are both wide open. “What? Do I have something on my face?”

“Where did you learn to speak Xhorhassian?” Beau asks, recovering first.

“In the army. What’d you think I did in the war, attach the sequins to the smoke bombs?”

“You were a… translator?” 

“I mean, I also cleaned out the shitters every now and then, but -”

“Keg. Stop deflecting,” Beau says. Her eyes are soft as she squeezes Keg’s hand. “Thank you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Keg mutters, but her eyes are shining and she looks away. “Now, let’s get her something to eat, yeah? Something soft and easy on the stomach.”

“I’m on it!” Jester declares, and bolts down the stairs.

“And you and me, let’s wrestle her into a shower, make her feel a bit more human,” Keg says to Beau. “No actual wrestling involved, of course.”

“I like to keep an open mind,” Beau tells her. She opens the door and looks down at Yasha. Yasha brings her head up and love rushes through Beau as she sees Yasha’s eyes, blue-green and purple, and though there’s no visual connection it’s as though Yasha feels her there, because a hand comes up and reaches for her.

Beau takes it, squeezes it, kisses it. “I’m here,” she whispers, meshing her fingers with Yasha’s.

Yasha says nothing, but her thumb presses against Beau’s tattoo and the look on her face, though still pinched, gets softer. She breathes something out, soft Xhorhassian words.

“What’d she say?” Beau asks Keg.

_“Thank you for being my home.”_

* * *

_loose ends_

Dr. Trickfoot comes on a Saturday with information from the Nicodranian Medical Licensing Boards. Following testimony from Yasha and others, including a medical student named Caleb and a Xhorhassian practitioner, J. Kait O’Geist, Dr. Obann has been banned from practicing, his license stripped permanently. Obann has also been turned over to prosecutors for the Empire, who will seek punishment for him under the relevant laws on torture and human experimentation.

As a reward for helping to prevent further torture, and perhaps as some sort of bizarre compensation, the prosecutorial team who interviewed Yasha sends along a not-insubstantial check.

“What do I do with this money?” Yasha asks Beau that night.

“Anything you want,” Beau says.

“It’s too much.”

“You can save it,” Beau says. “Maybe put it away for a trip or something.”

She turns out the light.

“There’s nowhere I want to go.”

“Then save it for a _staying here.”_

“You’re ridiculous.”

“Yeah? Well, you keep hanging out with me, so what’s that make you?”

“A good judge of character,” Yasha replies tartly, and she kisses Beau firmly.

  
  
On the third anniversary of Yasha’s homecoming - as they all refer to it now - they go to the movies to see an animated film about two sisters facing mystical intrigue in a forest full of magic and secrets. Beau looks over several times and sees the movie reflected in Yasha’s eyes, the animation flickering while Yasha blinks.

It’s near the end of the movie, when the older sister is in a mysterious island temple discovering her true purpose, that Beau looks over and sees tears on Yasha’s face reflecting the movie back just as Yasha’s sightless eyes do.

“Yash?”

“Hmm?” Yasha doesn’t turn her head.

“Are you okay?”

“She is… she is singing about me.”

 _Come my darling homeward bound /_ **_I am found!_ **

“Yeah, Yash. Yeah, she is,” Beau says, and feels absolutely no shame at sobbing in the darkened womb of a theater.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on Tumblr as memorysdaughter.


End file.
